It was Bill, of course. We clicked from the start. With­in a week he hied me off to north Philadel­phia to help strip the odd­ly attrac­tive, faux lizard skin uphol­stery out of a rusty old car. It turned out a bad mistake—we’d junked an ultra-rare 1951 Kaiser Emer­ald Drag­on.…

Small tor­toise­shell, one of Churchill’s favorites, has declined at Chartwell in recent years, but can still be found there.

Churchill was fas­ci­nat­ed by but­ter­flies since boy­hood and col­lect­ed many col­or­ful local vari­eties while sta­tioned in India in 1896-97. At Chartwell, he began rais­ing but­ter­flies in 1939 and con­tin­ued after Chartwell was reopened after the war. The but­ter­fly “farm” was set up with the help of Hugh New­man, who described the events in Finest Hour 89, Win­ter 1995-96, start­ing at page 34; a .pdf is ava­iable: click here.

Sir Winston’s daugh­ter Lady Soames was not sure when exact­ly this hob­by end­ed, but it might have been after an event described by long­time Chartwell sec­re­tary and Chartwell admin­is­tra­tor the late Grace Ham­blin, at the 1987 Dal­las Churchill Con­fer­ence, reprint­ed in Finest Hour 117: